The Thinking Housewife: Olympic women athletes too athletic

Sure, America’s women athletes may have taken home a whopping 29 gold medals, but over on The Thinking Housewife, Laura Wood is pissed off at them – and the rest of the Olympic women — for being so, well, athletic.

In a recent post, Wood rushes to the defense of a Turkish newspaper columnist who complained about the “broad-shouldered, flat-chested women” who were destroying Womanhood with their mannish, muscular bodies. Alas, wrote Yuksel Aytug, even their “breasts – the symbol of womanhood, motherhood – [were] flattened into stubs as they were seen as mere hindrances to speed.” Curse you, sports bras!

Seriously, in future Olympics, female athletes should face mandatory deductions for every cup size less than C.

Wood adds her own two cents:

A man who dares to say what every normal person has been thinking when confronted with the muscle-bound female gladiators at the games and what soft, effeminate Western men would not dare articulate, Aytug has been attacked for his remarks throughout the Western world. He is tiresomely accused of misogyny. In fact, judging from these words, he is an admirer of women, a courageous defender of them.

Or at least of their tits.

The Olympic Games are anti-woman. They require female athletes to ape men in grotesque ways. They compromise female fertility and modesty. They promote the idea that aggression and competitiveness in women are normal and healthy. They debase not just women athletes but womanhood throughout the world.

many women body builders who continue to pump iron cease having periods altogether.

Having your period != being “womanly”. Sometimes when I get really really stressed I miss periods. And some women just stop having them altogether when they reach a certain age. And some women just don’t get them for other reasons. And some women have them intermittently naturally. And some women work out a ton and still get them. And sometimes weightlifting won’t affect the menstrual cycle but running a certain number of miles a week will. Good grief, you seriously don’t know that there are all kinds of different people and there is no “one way” for people to be (woman or not).

But men and women are not physically equal and denying this won’t change a dayamn thang.

And not all men are physically equal. And not all women are physically equal. And not all people are physically equal. Damn! Hmmm. I think I’m sensing a pattern. You’d think people were individuals or something.

@TheMcGee: I already addressed the fact that “womanly” is a purely subjective term and made no such claim that lacking periods is un-womanly.

@howardbann1ster: You’re making a inference about how I personally feel about my own body which you cannot possibly know or verify. But most of all, it does not invalidate what I posted about female body builders and the fact that men’s and women’s bodies are built differently. I claim that there is no physical equality between the sexes because for one their bodies are distinguishable not only by appearance, but on measurable physical performance stats.

Dude, you said they ain’t equal. Either you think your body is beter–which is obviously a hateful beleif that I would not want to say you had, because that would be putting mean and nasty thoughts in your mouth–or you thought they were better. And I wanted to assure you that just because you don’t have their body doesn’t mean you’re less than them.

I strength train and wear sports bras. Never did I think I was destroying womanhood. In fact, I feel sorry for, “The Thinking Housewife” for having such a narrow view of womanhood. Rigid gender roles are stupid.

Oh no! The women athletes don’t meet the standards of some newspaper columnist and the Parroting Housewife! And they have nothing to console themselves with but their gold medals, likely future endorsement deals, fitness, fame, and sense of achievement at something that few people of either gender accomplish in their lifetimes. What’s a girl to do? Tsk tsk.

@TheMcGee: I already addressed the fact that “womanly” is a purely subjective term and made no such claim that lacking periods is un-womanly.

Nope. You just quoted someone who said” So if a woman pumps iron it undermines the purpose of her body, makes her less womanly?”

And then said this:

“Well, it certainly does cause a decrease in estrogen and many women body builders who continue to pump iron cease having periods altogether.”

But sure, I totally understand how you’re not saying that’s un-womanly. And I can totally understand why you wouldn’t want to comment on the personal opinion of someone who says that such a thing is un-womanly because it’s totes personal opinion. It can’t possibly be wrong and completely conflict with reality. Ya know, made up standards for what makes someone a particular gender.

@ MSN So having your period is womanly and men like womanly things. It’s a given women are on this earth to make men love them. So it only makes sense men love the shit out of our periods. Instead of winning gold medals, training hard in sports we love, pushing ourselves to the edge of endurance and accomplishing stuff, women ought to take the time men are competing to just talk to them endlessly about menstruation. Dudes will love it.

McGee, you’ve wished in vain. I made extra sure I had a daughter (prayers to Bona Dea).

But don’t fret. I’ll be certain that my daughter grows up to be a good little Valkeryie for the hivemind. I mean, she’s only ten now and she wouldn’t put up with your shit. She’d laugh and tell you you’re an idiot.

Jenna Marbles tore that Aytug dude a new asshole over that one. Now granted she’s hot either way, but she’s the sort of person that people who would say things like this can’t deal with either way — I’m fond of reminding people who dis her that she has a master’s degree and is in all likelihood smarter than they are. (That goes double for her former boss at Barstool Sports — Dave Portnoy’s… complaints… only make sense when you remember he’s a dudebro writing for dudebros and doesn’t know what to do with a woman who could go on a three-day bender and still out-think him.)

Oh no! The women athletes don’t meet the standards of some newspaper columnist and the Parroting Housewife! And they have nothing to console themselves with but their gold medals, likely future endorsement deals, fitness, fame, and sense of achievement at something that few people of either gender accomplish in their lifetimes.

This is why I can’t even muster up some annoyance; the same with that article on Sally Ride a few posts back. “But but but womanhood!” just falls flat.

Oh, how cute! NWO is making a pest of himself *everywhere* and he’s just as unoriginal wherever he goes.

Men and women aren’t the same. Women can’t piss on a wall and men can’t have periods. Other than that, MSN, I’ve seen little bitty peasant women who could throw you over the wall, at least unless you’re obese.

Calling guys paedos because they find a 16 year old attractive is a little ridiculous. I guess Taylor Swift is a paedo because she was with the twilight and Kennedy kid before they were 18. Perhaps the female athletes could stop wearing next to nothing and maybe we would focus on their accomplishments instead of appearance.

or we could just focus on their accomplishments because they won the fucking olympics and that’s kind of accomplishment sort of dwarfs the pretend concerns of empty-headed moral scolds like you?

Uh oh. I can see I’ve put my foot in it. I’m a little thrown by your comment though. I think I might have expressed myself poorly or had blinders on and expressed something offensive. Can you point out what I said that has offended you so I can either explain myself or learn where my blinders are and what I opinions/beliefs I have that I need to examine. I truly did not mean anything offensive and I feel terrible that I may have said something that would cause someone to be so angry by it.

I must be totes anti-women, then. Just yesterday I was wrestling around on the mat, practicing take downs in my martial arts class. I plan on taking up free running. LOTS of sweating and working out to build up my endurance. SO evil.

I want you to explain to me how exactly the women are wearing “next to nothing” whereas the men are properly attired. Because what I see are members of both genders dressed in a way that allows them to move freely, as you would need to when you’re, you know, doing gymnastics.

Training as hard as professional athetes do can fuck with your hormones in a non-healthy way, but that goes for men as well as women. It’s just that people only ever focus on women who loses their period, perhaps because that’s such a clear sign that your hormones are messed up. But training yourself to perform the feats super-athletes do isn’t really healthy for EITHER gender. Still, you don’t become a professional athlete unless you think it’s worth it, at the end of the day. It’s their bodies, their choice.

@Vitamin D, the testosterone question IS a bit more complicated than that.
In equestrian men and women compete on equal terms, and in shooting guns and bows men and women were only separated some time ago because men dislike losing to women. But in most sports, men on average perform better than women on average. They do that, because they have more testosteron. It used to be that you competed in men’s sports if you had a penis and in women’s sports if you had a vagina, but that was changed, since penises and vaginas in themselves have nothing to do with performance. Nowadays, you compete in women’s sports if you’re below a certain level of testosteron, and that makes much more sense, since women having less testosteron than men is the SOLE JUSTIFICATION for having “women’s sports” as separate events.

Semenya was treated terribly shitty by the world wide media, when they questioned whether she really was a woman. Of course she’s really a woman. And yeah, it sucks that this particular genetic gift must be “treated” before she’s allowed to compete, while all other genetic gifts are allowed to flourish in sports. Still, if we say that you can have as much testosteron as your body naturally produces and still compete in women’s sports – the whole point with having women’s sports as separate events disappear.

You know, I have about had it up to HERE with people telling me what my body is supposed to look like. If you have any opinions about the way I look, just keep them to your fucking self, because I am NOT interested. And my “womanhood,” whatever that might be, is my damn business and no one else’s. Here’s a news flash: the way I look is the LEAST important part of who I am.

The coverage of the Olympics has really pissed me off, as you can see.

I’m assuming your comment is in response to my exchange with sans Nom about the subjectivity of the phrase “womanly” because of your use of the word “totes”. (If not, feel free to ignore me. It’s just I see that I’ve pissed off at least one other person so I thought maybe I pissed you off as well and for that I feel terrible).

Clearly I have managed to express the exact opposite of what I was trying to say. I disagree with the idea that “womanly” is subjective or changes with personal opinion. I agree with the idea that a person might find certain traits more or less attractive but no, I don’t think those traits would therefore make a person more or less womanly.

Working out, wrestling, practicing take downs, running, are an excellent expression of a person’s womanhood. My sister plays rugby, wears men’s clothes, refuses to wear makeup, travels, loves learning to cook, and does a number of other wonderful things and that is an awesome expression of her womanhood. I knit, love wearing heels, spend too much time on the Sims, hate cooking, and am learning programming in my spare time and that is my expression of my womanhood. My point being that people are individuals and express their womanhood in different ways and none is more “womanly” than another. (Of course these are just a few examples and not an exhaustive list of all of the things that any of us do to express ourselves).

I come from a perspective of hearing people making comments to my sister about her not being “womanly” because some jackass has an opinion on what “womanly” is. That’s what I meant by saying that sans Nom’s comment about “womanly” being subjective and based on opinion was in disagreement with reality.

I hope I have made myself more clear and am not making it worse. But I am sorry. Whether I meant it or not I was careless and my above comment came across as insulting. The last thing I want to do is make anyone feel like I’m trying to tear them down.

Dude, you said they ain’t equal. Either you think your body is beter–which is obviously a hateful beleif that I would not want to say you had, because that would be putting mean and nasty thoughts in your mouth–or you thought they were better.

You’re setting up a false dichotomy. What I meant is that men’s and women’s bodies are different! I did not suggest that my body or somebody else’s body is better than the other.

But sure, I totally understand how you’re not saying that’s un-womanly. And I can totally understand why you wouldn’t want to comment on the personal opinion of someone who says that such a thing is un-womanly because it’s totes personal opinion. It can’t possibly be wrong and completely conflict with reality. Ya know, made up standards for what makes someone a particular gender.

Stop belaboring on the semantics, will ya! Different kinds of physical training do different things to the body. Like it or lump it, bench pressing(as opposed to leg pressing), which uses the upper body, does indeed have that effect on the human female body. Athletics is an area where human sexual dimorphism is at its peak.

Jesus. This housewife doesn’t really think, does she? Didn’t cross her mind that the body is the athlete’s tool and it doesn’t need the same kind of attributes as a model’s body needs as a tool. Oh no, she thinks she has some divine right to dictate how other women use their own bodies, she needs to dictate other women’s preferences when it comes to enjoying their bodies.

I’ve not read stupidity of this caliber in some days. And sadly at the core it’s the same old stupidity that’s been on repeat for centuries. A woman doesn’t even own her own self, her body.

Body building, involves doing isolated exercises and continuously inducing what is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, (done with high reps, lowish weight). Continuously hitting these forms muscle conditioning can wreak havoc on the hormones of both male and female builders. This is why both drugs and overtraining are so common in builders, despite the fact that builders never coming close to hitting the loads that (say) an olympic lifter or a powerlifter would. The widespread prevalence of drugs use in the sport also complicates the issue.

People who lift as cross training/strength training for another sport, or people who are primarily powerlifters or olympic lifters don’t have these problems nearly so much, as the training they do is very different (higher weight, fewer reps, far more cardio and flexibility training). In addition, men have, on average, 10 times the testosterone as women. While strength training can increase testosterone production in women, no amount of lifting is ever going to raise the level of testosterone in your average woman 10 times. Hence the drugs in bodybuilding.

Your points are really only valid in the very testosterone drenched, drug contaminated world of body building, and only applicable to a very small subset of women who CAN raise their testosterone levels substantially, or those who get outside chemical assistance. It certainly doesn’t apply to most people doing bench presses in their local gym to get toned or help with their swimming or basketball or whatever.

@ Dvargi- I get that testosterone can be (and isn’t always, btw) a physical advantage for these women, but there are tons of physical advantages you can have (taller, longer legs, better lungs, etc etc). Further, testosterone isn’t the only ingredient in manhood- there is an entire body type and muscle mass issue to deal with. Granted, women who have higher testosterone might have an advantage in building muscle, but they are still building muscle on a woman’s physique. Basically, it’s just another potential physical advantage a woman can have- a natural ability to build more muscle quickly- and we associate it so greatly with Manhood we forget it’s probably pretty common. I mean, it’s more than likely a few of the women around you have high levels of testosterone, and you’d never know because they’re too busy with their lives and jobs and eating delicious cupcakes to train for the Olympics, so no one will ever call them on it.

@Buttman: You do know that the requrements for Olympic uniforms are just that–requirements? That there’s been feminist protest against the different requirements for men and women? No, you don’t know? That’s not surprising since you apparently have no brain to think with in that butt.

You know what. I’m beginning to think that this “thinking housewife Laura Woods” is really some sort of troll or sockpuppet or satire website. For example, in this post she links to this cartoon on The Onion website, completely taking the cartoon at face value as if she had no idea what sort of site The Onion was. (For those who don’t get it, the cartoon is obviously mocking people like Mrs. Woods and their bizarre notions about women who play sports. Either she is actually that stupid, or she’s been pulling our legs the whole time.)

Also, and this is just me, she has her email address as a comment link, instead of a conventional comment setup. It’s kind of sneaky because the link looks like a regular comment link. But that’s why none of her commenters seem to actually be participating in a discussion. Not that I think there is anything wrong with not wanting standard comments, which can devolve into fights and need lots of moderation, on her site, but it’s also a great way to cull the messages you get so that you need only upload the favorable ones.

The status of women in the United States varied considerably during the 20th century, with increases 1900–1945, decreases 1946–1967, and considerable increases after 1968. We examined whether changes in written language, especially the ratio of male to female pronouns, reflected these trends in status in the full text of nearly 1.2 million U.S. books 1900–2008 from the Google Books database. Male pronouns included he, him, his, himself and female pronouns included she, her, hers, and herself. Between 1900 and 1945, 3.5 male pronouns appeared for every female pronoun, increasing to 4.5 male pronouns during the postwar era of the 1950s and early 1960s. After 1968, the ratio dropped precipitously, reaching 2 male pronouns per female pronoun by the 2000s. From 1968 to 2008, the use of male pronouns decreased as female pronouns increased. The gender pronoun ratio was significantly correlated with indicators of U.S. women’s status such as educational attainment, labor force participation, and age at first marriage as well as women’s assertiveness, a personality trait linked to status. Books used relatively more female pronouns when women’s status was high and fewer when it was low. The results suggest that cultural products such as books mirror U.S. women’s status and changing trends in gender equality over the generations.

Aw, come on dude, I’m still totally on edge here wondering how everything we say is marxist. While I don’t consider myself a Marxist, I do very much enjoy reading about marxist theory and application. But even with years of study, I’m obviously missing something! (Perhaps because I’m a historian, not an economist, athropologist, or political scientist, I’m not able to see the whole picture.) So if you could please point out specifically what marxist satements we’ve all been making, and then show why they’re marxist, it would really help.* Thanks!

(*Well. “Help” in the sense that it would prove you’re not just a terribly annoying marx-bot, programming working frantically as you try to catch context clues to figure out where to vomit your next marx-y word salad, and still failing miserably.)

It just now hit me what (I believe) you were talking about in your comment to me above. When I said that I was worried about having daughters and whether i would do a good job helping them develop good self-esteem and feelings towards their body I absolutely did NOT mean that having daughters, in and of itself, was a worry. I was expressing that I struggled with body image issues myself because of my “boy shape”. I didn’t make peace with my body until I was nearly thirty. And even still I can get down on myself for my looks. So, I do worry that I might not be great at helping a future daughter who inherits my body shape (or any other shape that is looked down on for not being how a woman is “supposed” to look) because I totally sucked/failed at that particular issue. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want a daughter. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love her like crazy. It means I’m worried about being able to give her the absolute best support and love and guidance and help that she deserves.

Maybe I am an idiot for worrying about that. There are lots of other things about being a parent I worry about too (again largely stemming from recognizing my shortcomings and worrying whether I’ll be good enough to give them what they deserve – boys or girls).

I do very much hope to have kids some day and when I’m ready, if I’m lucky enough for that to happen, I could care less what the gender is.

It has seriously been bugging me all day trying to figure out what I said to offend you. At any rate, I hope this addresses the offense and clears things up.

Vitamin D, obviously there are tons of women out there with unusual testosteron levels who we don’t know about because they don’t compete in sports. I honestly don’t know what that has to do with anything…? I mean, it’s a good counter argument to douchebags who go on about how Semenya can’t be a real woman because of her hormones, but I never said that. I explicitly said the opposite.

I just think that either we go with the current rule that you gotta be below a certain amount of testosteron to be allowed to compete in women’s sports, however shitty that might be for people like Semenya, or we completely ditch the idea of having separate competitions for women. Or, well, a third option would be to make a combined assessment of testosteron levels and other factors that tend to make men superior to women in sports, like height and muscle mass, but that wouldn’t solve the shittiness factor, since you’d still stumble on women time to time who wouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports unless they manipulated their bodies to fit within female standards.
So, basically, either rules that are shitty for some women or there’s no basis for having “women’s sports”.

I don’t think having women’s sports that are open to ALL WOMEN regardless of what they’re born like is really plausible. Like, how do you determine whether someone is a man or a woman? Basically, you ask them. And that works fine in all normal contexts. Well, once in a blue moon somebody might for some bizarre reason lie to you about zir gender, but that’s not a problem.
However, in sports, there are always gonna be men that are really superior to women when it comes to running, jumping or something like that, but can’t take any medals in men’s sports. If you have women’s sports open for ALL WOMEN, surely SOME of these men would be tempted to pretend to be trans women (who are okay with their current hormone levels and don’t feel they need hormone therapy – some real trans women feel that way). Then just go over to women’s sports and win away.

I know this SOUNDS ridiculous (men pretending to be women to gain some kind of advantage is such an old pop-cultural trope). I actually hope that somebody’s gonna poke a whole in my argument and go “Well, you could always check whether somebody really is a trans woman by XYZ and that would solve the problem”, since it WOULD be really nice if one could have women’s sports open for all women period.

@ Dvarg- Being 6 feet tall is rare for a woman, typically a trait shared by males, and gives very tall women an advantage in sports. Should we bar women who are really tall as well? What about broad shouldered women? What I am saying is having a high level of testosterone is just another physiological trait shared by quite a few women, and it is no more sensible to force them to change their physiology than it would be to bar really tall or broad shouldered or naturally muscular women. And trans women competing in the women’s divisions is actually happening here and there- I think it was Thailand and maybe Russia who got busted? Kind of makes me wonder how many trans women compete as women and lose and no one ever knows. I really can’t wrap my head around that issue because I can’t bring myself to really blame a woman for wanting to compete as a woman, but I do know other sports have managed to get around major size advantages by including weight classes in competitions. Maybe you could include similar muscle mass classes or something? And, for god sake, don’t make this special to women! Women should be the only gender penalized for having naturally higher than average levels of testosterone if it gives both genders an advantage. But I’m not really interested in finding an ethically sound solution to the potential problem of trans women competing in women’s categories, I am more interested in the real problem of forcing women to medically change their physiology to compete at all.

@Vitamin D: Yep, it DOES suck that ONE particular genetic advantage is singled out like that…
You said something interesting about weight classes in some sports, where weight gives you an advantage. That also made me think about Paralympics, and how they have different classes depending on your disability.

Perhaps the fairest solution would be to ditch the division between “men’s sports” and “women’s sports”. Instead, in some sports everyone just compete against each other on equal levels, as is already the case in equestrian sports, and used to be the case in shooting. In other sports, such as running, the rule could be that children compete with each other regardless of gender. But once you hit a certain age you’re assigned to, say, either class A, class B or class C (it doesn’t have to be THREE classes, could be two or four or five, but you get the idea). And which class you belong to is determined by those physical factors that are known to have a big impact on performance. Say, testosteron, muscle mass and leg length, or something like that. Different factors would be weighed in for different sports. Anyway, regardless of gender your assigned to a class depending on some relevant physical factors about you. Some classes will be heavily dominated by women and others heavily dominated by men, but there’s gonna be overlap. Nobody has to change their natural physiology to be allowed to compete.

That seems to me to be the fairest system. Although I don’t think it’s gonna happen in my lifetime, for various sexist reasons…

@ Dvargi- Yeah, that sounds like the ideal to me, and something that we ought to be working towards. I could also see this issue being a stepping stone towards that kind of division if people would start seeing it as unfair. Baby steps, right?

According to critical theorist Max Horkheimer a theory is critical in so far as it seeks “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (Horkheimer 1982, 244).

So, while Owly is grossly misapplying the strict marxist definition of critical theory, in the widest possible sense he’s just accusing everybody else of seeking social justice…while making a big show on his appropriation of social justice fight. I’m laughing at the irony.

Typical man & barefoot & pregnant housewife bull.A womans purpose in life ain’t to produce babies one right after the other & be home doing nothing but house chores.Women can have strength & be womanly.If you think all of a womans worth is in her body & breasts you must be shallow & don’t respect women at all.

This topic made me think of these generalizations. Traditional women like to date athletes (male, of course). Non-traditional women like to be athletes. Okay so not all traditional women date athletes and not all non-traditional women are athletes. But these generalizations are my opinions on what traditional and non-traditional women think when it comes to athletes.